Tears of the Black Tiger (2000) dir. Wisit Sasanatieng

Dum (Chartchai Ngamsan) and Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi) first met as children, when her wealthy father was visiting his father's farm village. An encounter with a trio of bullies wound up with Dum being scarred and Rumpoey nearly drowned. Rather than find out what had happened, Dum was brutally punished by his father. As the boy was recovering, Rumpoey came by to give him a harmonica, and he silently came to watch her train pull out when her vacation was over.

They reconnected years later in Bangkok in school when Rumpoey recognized Dum by the harmonica he was playing. Unfortunately, the same trio of bullies, who'd also come to the school, accosted Rumpoey again. Dum easily won the ensuing fight, but the school officials took the bullies' side and expelled Dum. Rumpoey felt guilty about getting the boy she had always secretly loved in trouble again, and took him to a beach where they had a heart-to-heart talk. Dum admitted that he too had always loved her, but felt that the vast gap in their social status meant that he could never be with her. Rumpoey declared that she was willing to sacrifice her social standing to be with Dum, and they arranged to meet at a certain sentimental location on a future date.

When Dum returned home, he found the farmstead wrecked, most of his clan dead, and his father dying. This, his father said, was the work of the jealous Kong clan. Naturally, the police could do nothing, and it was up to Dum to avenge his clan and father. Except that in the process, he was joined by the notorious bandit Fai (Sombat Metanee), who'd owed Dum's father a favor for saving his life years before. The vengeance was completed, and Dum was inducted into Fai's gang of outlaws, the Tigers.

Problem is, Fai has a strict rule that anyone who betrays him, by, say, leaving the gang or informing on them, must die. So Dum couldn't leave the gang. His skills, bravery and integrity soon earned him the nickname Black Tiger, and he became Fai's right-hand man, to the jealousy of former right-hand man Mahesuan (Supakorn Kitsuwon). On the date that Dum was supposed to meet Rumpoey, he and Mahesuan are stuck on a mission to wipe out traitors to the gang. Dum bails as soon as the traitors are dead, but arrives too late; Rumpoey is already gone.

Meanwhile, Rumpoey's father has become provincial governor. Being the kind of man who never actually asks his daughter's opinion on anything, he's engaged her to ambitious Police Captain Kumjorn (Arawat Ruangvuth), who is so taken by Rumpoey's beauty that he's utterly failed to notice how cold she is towards him. Now that Dum has (she thinks) failed her, Rumpoey has no choice but to go through with the engagement.

Captain Kumjorn wants to prove himself worthy of this honor, so he's pledged to destroy the Tigers once and for all. The stage is set for tragedy.

This romantic drama is a homage to Hollywood, especially the Western genre. Even though the setting is 1950s Thailand, the bandits dress and ride horses like Wild West outlaws, and Western-style background music is common. (There's also insert songs that are more Fifties Thai pop music.) The colors are rich, and many of the sets deliberately artificial-looking. The violence scenes are clearly homaging the violent Westerns of Leone and Peckinpah.

Black Tiger is a stoic and emotionally repressed protagonist. He'd very much prefer not to be a bad guy, but his life circumstances and skills at killing have pushed him into an outlaw role. He chooses to show brotherhood and trust to Mahesuan; too bad his fellow bandit doesn't reciprocate.

Rumpoey is a much put-upon heroine, bratty as a child and cold as an adult. Men are constantly hitting on her, and perhaps the reason she like Dum so much is because he has to be asked his opinion. She's willing to defy social convention, but only if she gets the support of her lover, otherwise being an obedient daughter.

Captain Kumjorn is an ass. He's well-meaning, but completely misses that Rumpoey is not in any way attracted to him as a lover or even a friend until far too late in the story. His reaction to that is ill-advised, and leads to the final tragedy.

The action is exciting, it's a good-looking movie, the music's nice. The artificiality of some of the acting is meant to be a feature, not a bug, but sometimes it goes a little too far and that threw me out of suspension of disbelief several times.

This movie was first optioned for American distribution by a company that shortened it, tacked on a happier ending, and then shelved it for several years. It was then bought by a smaller distributor and released at full length and the plot intact, but by that time the publicity buzz had worn off, so it remains obscure.

Content note: Frequent gory violence and death, including a severed limb. Child abuse. Peril to a child. Sexual harassment and attempted marital rape. Black Tiger and Mahesuan swear blood brotherhood before Buddha, actual blood is involved, and Mahesuan is being impious. Animal death. A little person bandit is used for sight gags, but otherwise seems to be treated as an equal by the bandits. This film is unrated, but would probably come down as an "R" for violence, so sensitive viewers should proceed with caution.

This is a movie that makes it onto a lot of "weird movies" lists; it's by no means bad, but it's not going to be to many viewers' taste. But if you like both Golden Age Hollywood romantic drama and violent Westerns, this might be the movie for you.

Bangkok Haunted (2001) dir. Oxide Chun Pang

We open on a moving truck in the Thai countryside, heading for Bangkok. The man sitting in the back taking care of the packages gets scratched by...something. The moment he realizes he's in a horror story, he jumps out the back of the truck, which would ordinarily be a stupid thing to do, but in this case makes him the smartest person in the movie. (Looks like he survives, anyway.) The driver isn't shown to be concerned about the disappearance of his partner when he delivers the boxes to Jieb (Pimsiree Pimsee), who I think is a grad student. Among the boxes is one that doesn't belong to her, which contains an antique drum of a style favored before World War Two.

Jieb calls in her professor, and we flashback to the tragic tale of Paga (also Pimsiree Pimsee). Paga was a young orphan adopted by a music/dance teacher and trained to become a traditional style dancer. She developed a bond with the teacher's deformed son Gnod, who was good at neither music nor dance, but a skilled woodcarver. When Paga has matured into a beautiful young woman, she is courted by the handsome Fond, and finds him agreeable. Unfortunately, while Paga loved Gnod like a brother, he loved her in a different way, and became violently jealous. On the night of Paga's engagement to Fond, she and Gnod disappeared and were never seen again.

In the present, the antique drum seems to be the center of bizarre events, and eventually Jieb learns the full story behind the events, with dangerous repercussions.

It's at this point we learn the movie has a framing sequence of three women in a Bangkok coffee bar trading horror stories. Jieb has left the end of her tale a bit ambiguous, and the other two woman complain about that.

The second story features Pan (Dawan Singha-Wee), a sexually frustrated young woman. She's not thrilled when her next-door neighbor brings home a man and she can hear them having wild sex through the wall. Pan is surprised though, when she wakes up the next morning and the neighbors are still at it. The neighbor attributes her success, and multiple husbands she's outlived, to "Ply Essence", an aphrodisiac perfume. She has a drop left for Pan to try.

Pan manages to snag a random hookup at the club that night, and the sex is awesome, but the man falls ill the next morning. Maybe there are side effects?

While waiting for her own bottle (there are supply issues--and the audience gets to see the secret ingredient, it's just as gross as you were expecting), Pan gets a hankering for Tim, a handsome fellow who takes the same ferry to work that she does. Too bad he seems to have a girlfriend!

Once she has her supply of Ply Essence, Pan decides to overuse it in a non-recommended way. Good news is, she's now with Tim forever. Bad news is, she's now with Tim forever.

The final story has handsome police detective Nop (Pete Thongchua) investigating the death of Kanya (Kalyanut Sriboonrueng), a woman found hanged from a rafter. It's been ruled a suicide, but Nop notices the evidence doesn't support that. The chief is absolutely convinced it's a suicide and tells Nop to drop the case. In the tradition of cowboy cops everywhere, Nop continues his investigation on the down low. Was it Vinal, Kanya's abusive husband, or her secret lover In? The careful viewer will probably spot the significance of some clues before Nop does, but the real solution to the case is still a shocker.

The supernatural elements in this last story are very minor, and it could have worked as a straight police thriller (very Alfred Hitchcock Presents), but put the story in a very different context by being present.

And there's a last twist in the framing sequence.

Good: Watching foreign horror movies is always an adventure. The filmmakers bring their own culture to the table, with their own ideas of what's scary and what's "normal." They might have taken on ideas and craft from Hollywood, (there are Nightmare Before Christmas and Fiddler on the Roof t-shirts visible) but with their own accents and innovations. This movie does that very well, especially with the use of traditional Thai music in the first story. The cinematography is good, and I thought the acting worked well.

Less Good: The editing uses a lot of freeze-frame transitions that made me think for the first couple that my DVD player was stalling, and kept irritating me thereafter. Not revealing the framing sequence until after the first story confused me. Several actors appear in multiple segments, causing questions about whether they were playing the same characters in each or just keeping cast cost down.

Political: The third story looks like it's going into "copaganda" (police officers do unethical/illegal things and are treated by the story as though they're the heroes for doing so) territory, but by the end it's an ACAB story.

Content note: Oh Lordy. Gore, death, closeups of wounds and internal organs, body horror, forced abortion, suicide. Female toplessness, on screen extramarital sex (no genitals), dubious consent sex. Vomiting, other body fluids. Ableism. You'd better have a strong stomach.

Overall: A very good horror film with a couple of irritating flaws. Recommended to horror fans who are okay with the gore and can handle subtitles.

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (2003) dir. Prachya Pinkaew

Don (Wannakit Sirioput) had one job. Go to a remote village in Thailand, buy an ancient amulet at way below market price, and return it to mob boss Komtuan (Suchao Pongwilai) for sale on the black market. He failed because the village chief is saving the amulet for his son Humlae (Petchtai Wongkamlao) to wear when he finally returns to the village to take up his priestly role. Not wanting to return empty-handed, Don steals the head of Ong-Bak, the village's guardian statue. The village is stricken with drought, and there are only six days left before the festival of Ong-Bak must be held to save it. The villagers turn to their tree-climbing champion Ting (Tony Jaa) to go to Bangkok and retrieve the head.

Ting is also skilled in the art of Muay Boran (an older form of Muay Thai) but has been warned never to use it except in self-defense as his master once killed an opponent in the ring and has been consumed with guilt ever since. The villagers pool their meager resources to aid Ting in his quest.

Once in Bangkok, Ting looks up Humlae to assist him. But Humlae has become the grifter George, perpetually losing at gambling and in debt to thugs. George's only ally is his girlfriend Muay Lek (Pumwaree Yodkamol) who is allegedly a college student but mostly helps George with his scams. George has no interest in anything having to do with his hick home town or tracking down stolen stones. That is, until Ting stumbles into an underworld fight club and turns out to be awesome at kicking butt. Now, if he can just get Ting to make him some money....

This was the first Tony Jaa film to make it big in the West, and sparked a renewed interest in Thai films in general. Part of the attraction was that Jaa did all his own stunts without the aid of wires or computer graphics, which had come to dominate larger budget martial arts films at the time. Mix realistic-looking kickboxing and some parkour-style jumping, and you've got some very nice action scenes. I especially liked the Tuk Tuks (minicabs) chase sequence.

Komtuan puts in a strong performance as a man who doesn't let the fact that he's lost his larynx to throat cancer and is confined to a wheelchair stop him from villainous hubris.

One of the themes of the movie is "country good, city bad." Ting is pure of heart and the villagers wholesome. The city dwellers are pretty much all jerks, most of the visible ones being mobsters or mobster-adjacent. Humlae/George has lost sight of what's truly important in life, Muay is only slightly nicer, and even Ting darkens and becomes more violent as he spends time in Bangkok. A more direct contrast is when Ting chews natural herbs to refresh his energy before the final fight (good) while his opponent injects artificial chemicals (bad.)

If the movie has a flaw, it's that the plot is a bit thin. This is the kind of story where the movie would have been a good hour shorter if George hadn't kept trying to trick Ting into making money for him, or the bad guys simply turned over the stone head that was worthless to them.

Content notes: Violence, not usually too graphic. Don and a woman of negotiable virtue start a sex scene, but when Ngek mentions she wants to get clean, he murders her with a cocaine overdose. Also, one of the villainous fight club opponents molests a waitress and insinuates that Thai women are prostitutes. Komtuan smokes through a hole in his throat.

Ong-Bak gave martial arts film makers a kick in the pants and upped their game, so other movies since then have surpassed it. But it's always good to go back to films that set off a trend and enjoy them on their own merits.